Not For Everyone: Oprah Winfrey, Shonda Rhimes Open Up About Why Marriage Won’t Work For Them

Powerful, successful women are often plagued by the idea of having it all: a career, marriage, and children. But for media moguls Oprah Winfrey and Shonda Rhimes, marriage isn’t a journey they’d like to embark on anyway.

The two inspirational women candidly chatted about marriage during an episode of Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday, The Huffington Post reports. Rhimes, the creator of the ABC hits, How To Get Away With Murder, Grey’s Anatomy, and Scandal, said she knew she always wanted children, but never dreamed about walking down the aisle.

Today, as a mother of three, she’s OK with declaring she never wants to be married.

Rhimes tells Oprah:

“[It] feels obvious and maybe silly or something to people who are married or people who are older, people who have been through it,” Rhimes says. “But if you’re a woman in your thirties or forties, that’s a big deal. Everybody’s asking you all the time if it’s going to happen … There’s a huge amount of pressure. I’m one of those people, since I was 5, I could tell you I was going to have kids. I could tell you I was going to have three. I could tell you they were going to be girls,” she says. “But I have never wanted to get married. I never played bride. I was never interested. I don’t know what it is; I never wanted to get married.”

The showrunner, however, is a fan of dating. Since achieving success with her TGIT shows, she’s been able to tell the difference between potential partners and those who aren’t worth her time. Her declaration seemed to inspire Oprah to voice her own thoughts about marriage, revealing she’s comfortable with the status of her relationship with longtime boyfriend Stedman Graham.

Oprah tells Rhimes:

“I was supposed to do a book at the same time … and the wedding and the book were happening around the same time. We were on our way from the book party and Stedman said he did not want to have his wedding disturbed by all these people asking me about the book (which I ended up not doing),” Oprah says. “I said, ‘OK. All right. So he said, ‘We should just postpone this wedding. I said, ‘OK.’ And that was it. We have never discussed it again.”

As it turns out, the delay helped Oprah come to an important realization about herself.

“What I realized is, I don’t want to be married,” Oprah says. “Because I could not have the life that I created for myself … I knew that I couldn’t do it.”

Rhimes also spoke about her dramatic weight loss, her shows, and her spiritual journey on her “year of yes.”